China’s designs to build a massive network of land and sea links connecting four continents have revived popular interest in the old Silk Route, whose success was in small part owed to Zoroastrian merchants carrying goods from China across Central Asia and, often, all the way to Europe.
A recent article in the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Posttalked about how Zoroastrian merchants had been trading with China in the 12th century—and possibly even earlier. Records of fire temples in Chinese cities along the Silk Route have apparently been found in official records dating back to the 12th century and, from these, historians have pieced together the fact that Chinese emperors had encouraged Zoroastrian merchants to come and trade in the country and, in order to attract them, they allowed them to build their own fire temples to worship in. The ancient Chinese even had their own special name for the Zoroastrian religion: Ao Jiao. Read more
A recent article in the Hong Kong newspaper South China Morning Posttalked about how Zoroastrian merchants had been trading with China in the 12th century—and possibly even earlier. Records of fire temples in Chinese cities along the Silk Route have apparently been found in official records dating back to the 12th century and, from these, historians have pieced together the fact that Chinese emperors had encouraged Zoroastrian merchants to come and trade in the country and, in order to attract them, they allowed them to build their own fire temples to worship in. The ancient Chinese even had their own special name for the Zoroastrian religion: Ao Jiao. Read more
